Lawsuit alleges historic sexual assault by Hamilton educator

This was in 1995, at Canadian Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in west Hamilton.

Dr. James (Jim) Anderson, 69, had been an anthropologist and the primary chair of McMaster University’s anatomy division, and a founding father of the medical faculty.

Known for his mind, charisma, and offbeat sense of humour, within the early Nineteen Seventies he created “Cool School,” an alternate for Hamilton teenagers who struggled in standard school rooms and in life.

Dunford, a Cool School pupil in 1982-83 — “an intellectually gifted younger man,” Anderson wrote of his pupil — wasn’t certain why he attended the funeral for a person who continued to hang-out him.

For years, he had performed it again in his thoughts, typically whereas consuming and staring into house, burning days and nights.

What ought to he have finished? Had it been his personal fault? Was Anderson a sufferer, too?

Dunford had contemplated suicide. He had learn the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, and agreed with the German thinker that the considered taking one’s life supplied comfort, serving to “by means of many a darkish night time.”

And then at some point, he determined to take his demons, and the departed, to court docket.

“Looking again, I might really feel Dr. Anderson’s attraction to me from the beginning,” Dunford says. “He instructed me he preferred hairless. I had no chest hair. Even now I nonetheless can’t shave.”

Sitting for an interview in a espresso store, Dunford pulls down the collar of his shirt to disclose his pale decrease neck and higher chest.

His candour feels jarring, however at 60 years outdated, having instructed his story to family members and legal professionals, maybe he has no time for subtleties.

Dunford is pursuing a $2.85-million lawsuit in opposition to Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS), holding the company liable for 2 alleged sexual assaults by Anderson.

Long-standing, “historic” sexual assault claims aren’t uncommon, however Dunford’s allegations return to incidents 4 a long time in the past.

Pretrial motions within the case are scheduled in July, and the trial is predicted to start within the fall.

All of the main points in Dunford’s assertion of declare are primarily based on allegations not but confirmed in court docket.

In its assertion of defence, HHS “denies that any of the alleged assaults came about” and that if “any such conduct came about,” HHS is just not liable. The assertion provides that “no grievance of inappropriate conduct was made to the hospital by Dunford or anybody else.”

A spokesperson for HHS declined to remark for this story as a result of the case is earlier than the courts.

When he was 19, Dunford says he would drop by the stately Hamilton residence of Dr. Anderson, who was known as “D.A.” by Cool School college students.

They would chat for hours, about philosophy and literature, drink Anderson’s superb Scotch and imported beer. Dunford marvelled at artifacts on show within the den collected from around the globe.

Anderson gave Dunford his Nineteen Sixties-era typewriter, as a present.

This was all earlier than a wintry night time in 1983, when Dunford says Anderson modified the course of his life.

Forty years later, Dunford nonetheless has the typewriter. He’s unsure why.

Dunford grew up within the Nineteen Sixties within the North End, close to Barton Street East and Wentworth Street North. He was the oldest of 5 boys. A sixth boy died very younger from most cancers.

He says his father was a gambler who cheated on his mom and was not concerned of their lives.

His dad and mom separated. His mom, who had little training, raised the boys on mom’s allowance, and rented out rooms to boarders.

He has a reminiscence from eight years outdated, of two of the boarders groping him in the home. Around that very same time, he says he was molested in close by Woodlands Park.

Dunford loved studying, however couldn’t keep targeted in class and failed Grade 7 at Gibson elementary.

“I wasn’t silly; I learn lots however I used to be a juvenile delinquent, or that’s what they known as me,” he says.

In 1977, at 14, he left Hamilton to dwell along with his aunt and uncle in Nova Scotia, however moved forwards and backwards a number of instances.

That similar yr, Dr. James Anderson wrote a report for Ontario’s Ministry of Education about Cool School, a program he had based in Hamilton six years earlier.

The idea was providing an choice for teenagers who didn’t reply properly to standard classroom studying, by using a casual, self-directed studying construction, and serving to them operate “as their very own academics.”

Anderson had drawn upon strategies he helped develop within the Nineteen Sixties at McMaster’s medical faculty.

Along with program co-ordinator Ted Ridley, Anderson wrote within the report that Cool School was for youth “immature in perspective,” a few of whom “habitually drug themselves or drink to the purpose of blotting out actuality,” and will have had a legal report, or “made half-hearted or honest makes an attempt to depart altogether from life.”

The report added that lots of the college students “haven’t loved very best relationships with their dad and mom” and that 28 per cent enrolled at one level had “a report of a number of convictions for juvenile or legal offences.”

Anderson had tutored “troubled youth” in his residence, earlier than Cool School opened in a constructing at Chedoke Hospital on the Mountain. (Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals merged with Hamilton Civic Hospitals to type Hamilton Health Sciences in 1996.)

In the primary 4 years of this system, 15 Cool School graduates had been accepted by universities. By 1977, this system had 55 college students enrolled, with 4 full-time academics — known as tutors — along with volunteers.

He moved to Hamilton after becoming a member of McMaster’s medical college in 1967.

Anderson volunteered with the Boy Scouts of Canada, and established a clinic for youth in Burlington who had drug abuse points.

He obtained Hamilton Citizen of the Year honours in 1975, partially for his work with Cool School. An article in The Hamilton Spectator famous that Anderson, then 48, would typically publish bail for youth going through drug offence prices, get up for them in court docket, and “make midnight home calls within the dingy alleys and backrooms frequented by younger drug customers and children in hassle.”

A headline in The Spectator known as him the “druggies’ doc.”

Anderson was quoted saying he was “not a high-profile public determine” and so the honour “makes me a really feel a bit of bit just like the unknown soldier.”

Dunford carried out higher in class dwelling with household out east.

His uncle, an artist, turned him on to Nietzsche, and the German novelist Hermann Hesse, whose tales featured coming-of-age themes and the “seek for authenticity, that means, and the non secular life.”

In the autumn of 1980, at 17, Dunford had returned to Hamilton, and was attending Sir Winston Churchill highschool and dwelling at a youth residence known as Webber House.

He was additionally consuming, and breaking home guidelines staying out all night time.

A pal in Cool School urged Dunford prepare a gathering with Dr. Anderson.

Dunford says he met with Anderson in his workplace at Chedoke Hospital. Anderson was head of the college and a tutor.

“He wore glasses, and a jacket and tie,” says Dunford in an interview. “He smoked, had white hair, a comb-over … He appeared mild and sort, and actually listened to you.”

Dunford instructed Anderson that he had learn Hesse extensively.

“He was impressed; Hermann Hesse was D.A.’s hero … Cool School’s (philosophy) was primarily based on Hesse and his e book ‘The Glass Bead Game.’”

(The novel is a futuristic story a couple of “gifted, parentless schoolboy” who is chosen for an elite training system after which rises to greatness.)

Dunford says that in the course of the assembly, Anderson grabbed and twisted his nipple as a greeting of kinds.

“He ‘purple nurpled’ me that first time. I hated it. He acted like he was enjoying round, guffawing: ‘I gotcha.’ He did it to different boys, not simply me. I noticed it within the (faculty) hallway. I didn’t prefer it and I made that clear to him, and he stopped it.”

Mark Boardman, a Cool School pupil and pal of Dunford’s, instructed The Spectator the nipple grabbing was a “well-known” behavior of Anderson’s, however he by no means skilled it himself.

While not referencing groping, Ridley instructed The Spectator in an e mail that he recollects “occasional cases of jocular and consensual roughhousing” at Cool School, “which, given the relaxed and casual tradition of this system in that period, didn’t seem inappropriate or to have a sexual connotation.”

Dunford moved again to Nova Scotia, the place he labored at McDonald’s, learn the works of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky, and entered a brief story contest.

When he obtained optimistic suggestions from the competition decide, he gained confidence.

He phoned Anderson within the spring of 1982.

“Dr. Anderson mentioned, ‘what are you doing (out east)?’” says Dunford. “He instructed me, ‘if yow will discover your means again to Hamilton, I’ll admit you to Cool School.’”

He turned 19 that April, and entered Cool School in September 1982. Anderson was his tutor.

Anderson launched him to a program graduate who was attending McMaster University, and writing his PhD on Soren Kierkegaard, the existentialist thinker.

Dunford was impressed. He determined he needed to be a philosophy professor.

Cool School had moved to a constructing on King Street West, close to Queen Street South, leasing two flooring from the proprietor, the Sisters of St. Joseph.

Dunford lived in a small condominium on MacNab Street South. Soon he was dropping by Anderson’s home about 10 blocks away, at Herkimer Street and Bay Street South, the place Anderson lived along with his spouse.

Dunford was not the one pupil who dropped by Anderson’s home within the Eighties. Another was Richard Heinzl, a McMaster medical pupil who based the Canadian department of the humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.

“Here was this man (Anderson) who was this towering professor, completely revered, and but you could possibly develop a real friendship with him,” Heinzl instructed The Spectator in 2008. “You might knock on his door at midnight and he’d be up there working in his examine. He’d welcome you, and also you’d sit down and have a beverage with him and simply begin speaking concerning the world.”

In the autumn of 1982, Dunford had pneumonia, and says Anderson visited him, examined his chest with a stethoscope, and gave him items: books that he had signed, and the typewriter.

When Dunford was higher, Anderson continued to go to the condominium, bringing sake (rice wine) with him. They drank and skim poetry.

“I used to be so joyful this good man was taking an curiosity in me,” Dunford wrote in a letter to a lawyer, years later. “I went to his household’s Christmas dinner the place different good individuals attended.”

In February 1983, two months shy of his twentieth birthday, Dunford says he acquired drunk with Anderson on the home.

It was snowing outdoors, and Anderson drove him residence.

“It was there, in my condominium, he kissed me,” Dunford wrote. “I froze. I didn’t know what to do. He instructed me he was in love with me. That he had an sad, sexless marriage … A whole lot of ideas went by means of my head. This man, I believed, held the important thing to my future.”

The assertion of declare says Anderson carried out oral intercourse on Dunford, and that Dunford “was pressured to reciprocate.”

“I felt extremely responsible,” Dunford wrote. “I used to be actually confused and afraid. Not bodily afraid, simply usually afraid for the long run.

About two weeks later, he says, upset at what had occurred, he visited Anderson, planning to inform him how he felt. Instead, they drank and Anderson carried out oral intercourse on him, however Dunford “managed to refuse to reciprocate,” says the assertion of declare.

“I instructed Dr. Anderson that this couldn’t occur once more,” he wrote. “That it bothered me. That I wasn’t homosexual and didn’t like doing this … I used to be actually upset with myself. I couldn’t consider I allowed it to occur a second time.”

The declare says Dunford felt “confused, fearful, shameful, responsible, and complicit.”

He had felt like Anderson was a father determine to him. He believed Anderson was a genius.

“I cherished Dr. Anderson — platonically,” Dunford wrote.

Twice over the subsequent 5 months, he says, he visited Anderson and talked about his ultimate faculty paper, whereas behaving coldly towards him.

“I started to hate him, and he knew it,” Dunford says.

Dunford barely attended class the final month of this system. And then, in a letter dated Aug. 31, 1983, on Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals letterhead, Anderson really useful Dunford be admitted to school primarily based on his Cool School efficiency.

(In its assertion of defence, HHS asserts that Cool School officers had “no data” that Anderson was ever Dunford’s trainer or tutor, or that Dunford visited his residence, including that Dunford was a “non-materializing candidate who was discharged from this system in July 1982.”)

Under the heading “Letter of Equivalency,” Anderson famous that Dunford, “all the time a prolific author,” had learn 59 books, “together with the works of Hermann Hesse,” and written an essay on existentialist philosophy.

He concluded: “This intellectually gifted younger man has demonstrated his means to enter and reach a University program. He has the equal of Grade 13.”

Dunford says he was accepted to enter McMaster University that fall.

“That’s how good his phrase was.”

He squandered the chance.

Dunford would sit beneath an oak tree on campus, brooding, questioning if he was there as a result of he had supplied intercourse for Anderson.

He was dwelling along with his girlfriend, whom he had met at Cool School, however didn’t inform her his story. He didn’t inform anybody.

He was consuming extra, and smoking pot every day.

He dropped out earlier than Christmas.

Not lengthy after that, he pursued a profession in journalism, and was employed to write down tales and editorials for neighborhood newspapers in Stoney Creek and Dundas.

In 1990, Dunford heard that Cool School was about to shut.

It was round this time he instructed his story for the primary time, to his pal Boardman.

Later, he instructed his teenage cousin, Mary Dunford, who had additionally attended Cool School.

“Very few issues can have an effect on the core of a person like one thing like that,” she instructed The Spectator.

With Anderson lifeless, and not in a position to think about himself at some point confronting him, Dunford’s struggles worsened.

His newspaper colleagues seen him as a “troubled” individual, and he knew it.

He lacked confidence, couldn’t belief these in authority, and feared males usually.

“I had a very nihilistic perspective that I didn’t attempt to disguise … I used to be an actual mess between 1995 and 1999.”

He left his girlfriend. He took a depart from work and barely ate. He says Boardman confirmed up at his door at some point in 1997, and located him “emaciated” from weight reduction.

“Mark took me over his shoulder to the hospital.”

He was admitted to St. Joseph’s Healthcare, and to Homewood Health Centre in Guelph for six weeks of post-traumatic stress dysfunction (PTSD) therapy. He says he was identified with melancholy and basic anxiousness dysfunction. He attended Alcoholics Anonymous.

He says a few of his caregivers minimized his experiences with Anderson.

“It was like, ‘(Dunford) was 19 on the time, he was an grownup.’ That’s what it felt like.’”

He started courting a lady he had met at Homewood. The relationship didn’t final — “I’ve ruined each relationship” — however they’d a son.

He says fatherhood made him much less self-absorbed, ended the suicidal ideas, and motivated him to go public along with his allegations.

He says he took authorized motion to make sure his story is on the report and to carry Anderson accountable in spite of everything these years.

The declare says the long-term psychological well being impression from the alleged assaults precipitated Dunford to “develop sure psychological mechanisms as a way to survive … (together with) denial, repression, disassociation, and guilt,” and that it contributed towards a “lack of earnings … lack of incomes capability … and pleasure of life.”

He filed his declare in 2013, however the motion was dismissed in 2018, on account of delays submitting motions by his first lawyer.

His present lawyer, Michael Wilchesky, has represented purchasers in sexual abuse and assault “vicarious legal responsibility” circumstances for 12 years. He urged it’s common for a court docket to discover a faculty board, for instance, chargeable for the actions of a trainer who’s deceased.

He added that damages awarded by courts in such circumstances have grown in recent times.

Wilchesky instructed The Spectator the court docket should determine if “it’s simply and equitable” for (HHS) to be held chargeable for the hurt Dunford says he suffered.

The uncommon nature of Dunford’s case, he urged, is that Cool School was not operated by a college board, nor was it a company entity.

“So we’re left with the hospital,” says Wilchesky. “The hospital is saying, ‘we had nothing to do with (Cool School),’ however we are saying they’re accountable as a result of all indicators pointed to the hospital working the Cool School; it operated on hospital grounds by means of their adolescent growth unit — that Dr. Anderson headed — and funds to Cool School employees had been made by means of the hospital. Cool School paperwork had been on hospital letterhead, college students utilized to attend and had been admitted by means of the hospital’s common consumption course of … And these had been further susceptible children, with household issues, who couldn’t full highschool.”

Wilchesky plans to name witnesses at trial, together with former classmates of Dunford’s.

When requested by The Spectator if he’s conscious of further claims filed in opposition to Anderson previously, Wilchesky mentioned he was unable to remark.

Ridley, the Cool School program co-ordinator, instructed The Spectator that he’s “shocked and troubled” to listen to of Dunford’s allegations, and added that he would have “adopted up and reported the scenario appropriately” if he had been made conscious of them. “In my expertise, college students had been snug approaching me, or different employees, with issues of any kind, together with mistreatment, assured they’d be handled critically, and their points addressed.”

Tony Hansen labored as a summer time pupil in Cool School in 1979, and as a pupil trainer in this system within the early Eighties, attending employees conferences the place Anderson was current.

He instructed The Spectator that in his expertise, Cool School was “a joyful place,” and the allegations in opposition to Anderson “don’t match” with the individual he had skilled.

“(Anderson) was useful, sensible and sort,” he says. “He had a depraved sense of humour, and an infectious snicker. He might act like a child at instances; it wasn’t uncommon to see him talk about Dante’s ‘Inferno’ and Hermann Hesse one second, and race down the hallway with a squirt gun the subsequent. But he was clear on his expectations and when it was time to work … He was positively a father determine to a few of the college students.”

One week after Anderson’s demise, Cool School tutor Anne Snider wrote in The Spectator:

“Jim Anderson acknowledged the unimaginable alternative supplied by the uncertainty of adolescence … He supplied children respect, self-direction and a world of thrilling concepts. They cherished him for it and excelled due to it. Many went to school or different inventive endeavours. Few had been untouched by the magical door he opened for them.”

The final time Dunford spoke with Anderson was in 1990, 5 years earlier than his demise.

He says he appeared him up within the cellphone e book, after listening to Anderson not lived in his household residence.

He needed to let him understand how determined his life had been since Cool School.

“I needed to deliver up plenty of issues.”

Anderson answered the cellphone.

They engaged in small speak.

Dunford instructed him he had been writing for a newspaper.

“Oh, that’s good,” Anderson mentioned.

“I simply mentioned, ‘speak to you later,’” says Dunford. “I needed to deliver it up, however I couldn’t.”

Instead, he returned to brooding.

“I’d simply sit and suppose, and for a very long time I believed perhaps he was a sufferer. I’d make up excuses for him — like perhaps he couldn’t come out as a homosexual man within the ‘60s, when he was establishing the anatomy faculty and drugs faculty. Maybe society pressured him to repress his homosexuality.”

In the mid-2000s, Dunford began courting Laurie Kallis, a Hamilton artist.

They had been collectively 10 years. From the beginning, Kallis puzzled what had occurred in Dunford’s previous that influenced his mercurial persona.

“John is a form and respectable individual, however he couldn’t deal properly with stress or something remotely like confrontation,” she says. “He was not very steady for lots of the years we had been collectively. He was by no means offended, not even when he was consuming, but when he acquired upset about one thing, he would disappear, be gone for a day, per week. And that’s after we lived collectively.”

One of these instances, she went searching for him at a pal’s home.

“When I knocked on the door he opened it, broke into tears, and requested why it took me so lengthy to get him.”

Eventually, he instructed her about his previous.

“It got here out in items,” she says. “It was very painful for him to disclose his expertise.”

Kallis says Dunford struggled to know that “he didn’t do something improper, and to forgive himself.”

“I blamed myself for a very long time,” says Dunford. “I nonetheless do.”

He says he has been sober for about 9 years, and has a relationship along with his son, who’s now 21.

In the letter Dunford wrote to a lawyer in 2007, he mentioned his reminiscences of Anderson had been “not ‘recovered’ … it’s precisely as a result of I can’t neglect that I’ve had a lot hassle in my private life.”

But he says he has realized to focus much less on the previous.

He says he hopes his story will assist others with relatable experiences not really feel as alone, but additionally believes he will probably be criticized for focusing on Anderson, given the person’s popularity, and that he can not defend himself.

Dunford nonetheless has the books that Anderson gave him, and as for the typewriter, he wonders if he’ll destroy it, as soon as the case is over.

Symbolically, which may shut the chapter of the story that started the day Dunford wrote that letter 16 years in the past, laying naked his emotions.

At the top of the letter, he channels the phrases of Nietzsche, and maybe Dunford is subconsciously referencing himself, when making an attempt to account for the person he had cherished, after which despised.

“I’m wondering about so many issues,” he wrote. “What a tragedy, for each of us. Dr. Anderson was all too human, I assume.”